Explore Your Dream Kitchen at Virginia Tech; popular two-day workshop returns in May

March 29, 2005

-- Explore Your Dream Kitchen, a two-day workshop offered in Virginia Tech's Center for Real Life Kitchen Design, will be offered twice in May to participants who want to learn about planning and designing a kitchen that really meets their needs.

Attendees explore and experience kitchens with a wide variety of designs, products, materials, and technologies during this fun and interactive course. Participants are asked to bring plans, ideas, and questions about their homes and kitchens as everyone has the opportunity to discuss their personal needs during an individual kitchen consultation. Upcoming workshops are scheduled for May 20-21, and May 23-24.

When Virginia Tech set out to create a multi-station education center for its design students, it came up with not one but five fully operational kitchens, a laundry area, and a home office. The Center for Real Life Kitchen Design reflects the combined effort of Virginia Tech and 25 other contributors, including manufacturers who donated a wide range of products. The goal was to create a teaching lab for kitchen and bath design students.

The result was the Center, designed to give not only students the opportunity to learn new applications of products, materials, and technologies used in residential kitchen design, but also give researchers and industry professionals the opportunity to use the Center for training and continuing education. In addition, the Center also offers multi-media teaching capabilities for classes in housing and interior design.

The Center's kitchens reflect a variety of price levels, lifestyles and use of space. These include a gourmet kitchen, a contemporary kitchen, a family kitchen, a small starter kitchen, a laundry area and a home office. Participants will get to explore and use the different products and technologies in the Center kitchens as part of the workshop.

The workshop will be led by Virginia Tech faculty members:

Julia Beamish teaches in several areas of housing design including residential-space planning, kitchen and bath design, housing for older adults, universal design, and accessibility design. She is a certified kitchen design educator.

Joanne Emmel's areas of expertise are home appliance selection, use and care; residential housing; and energy management.

Kathleen Parrott is an expert in residential design and housing. Her special interests include kitchen and bath design, and environmental issues in housing. She is certified as a kitchen design educator by the National Kitchen and Bath Association.